FT: Prospect of anarchy on rise in strife-torn nation

By Roula Khalaf
Published: March 20 2006 02:00 | Last updated: March 20 2006 02:00

A year after the US invasion of Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy at the time, told Iraqis that civil wars were not started by a "decision". Countries slid into them, he said, when people were reckless and thought more of themselves than of the benefit to their own country.


Mr Brahimi's warnings are becoming Iraq's dreadful reality. On the third anniversary of the start of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein's regime, two images of Iraq emerge. One is the growth in sectarian violence on the ground. The other is the squabbling leaders still looking to form a government three months after parliamentary elections.

Whether Iraq is considered already in civil war or on the brink of it, what seems increasingly clear is that the political process on which the US had pinned hopes of stability has proved too weak and divisive to save the country from what will probably be years of violence and upheaval.

Though low-level sectarian attacks have been waged for a long time, the country's bleak prospects became more starkly apparent in the aftermath of the February 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque, the Shia shrine in the northern town of Samarra.

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